Justice: Joy erases a painful past

The joy of Game 6 erases a painful past

Published 5:30 am, Thursday, October 20, 2005

On a cool, perfect October evening, the local baseball team unburdened itself of 44 seasons of close calls and disappointment.

The Astros are no longer the team that couldn't finish the deal. That team is no more. In one final test of poise and perseverance, the other guy blinked.

Twenty-game winner Roy Oswalt pitched seven solid innings and his teammates collected 11 hits to defeat the St. Louis Cardinals 5-1 Wednesday night in Game 6 of the National League Championship Series.

They helped turn the Astros into winners. They felt the sting of past October disappointments more than others.

Biggio began crying as soon as it ended. During the game, he'd whispered to Cardinals slugger Albert Pujols: "Someone is going to have their hearts ripped out tonight."

The Astros had been that team in other years.

"It's an unbelievable feeling," Biggio said. "I'm so proud of this team."

He spoke amid a wild and emotional clubhouse celebration that included scouts, wives, team officials and others who'd waited so long, who'd suffered so many other times.

"Did you ever think you'd see this day?" Astros owner Drayton McLane said. "Now I want Bud Selig to hand us that World Series trophy."

Remember when the Astros were 15-30? No team in 90 years had made the World Series after being that many games under .500.

The Astros could have packed it in at 15-30. About that time, manager Phil Garner closed the clubhouse door and chewed out his players.

He told them they were better than they were playing. He said those words even though he surely had doubts.

They were an interesting mix of young and old. They had kids up from the minors who'd never failed in October. They had Andy Pettitte and Roger Clemens, who thought October was about success, not failure.

General manager Tim Purpura was one of the people who never gave up. Even when the Astros were at their lowest, he believed the end game would be different.

He believed in Chris Burke and Lane and Morgan Ensberg. Hitting coach Gary Gaetti also believed. He'd been around the block. He'd been on a championship team. He warned people to slow down on making judgments.

"This is a World Series team," he said Wednesday. "And they did it. I didn't do it. They did it."

Doing it the hard way

The Astros played this game the same way they played a lot of them this season. They did it the hard way.

They pecked out two runs in the third inning. They got a Lane home run in the fourth. They got another run in the sixth on a suicide squeeze bunt and another run in the seventh.

They were never far enough in front to feel comfortable. Because they'd had a lead in Game 5 on Monday. They'd had leads in other years. They had a history.

When it ended, a quiet crowd of 52,438 at Busch Stadium did the classiest thing possible. They gave the Astros a standing ovation.

They've long had the reputation of being baseball's best fans and proved it again Wednesday night as Busch Stadium closed after 40 years.

The Astros won because of Oswalt, the brilliant 20-game winner.

He pitched twice in the NLCS. Both games were in St. Louis. Both games were victories. He was the NLCS Most Valuable Player.

"When we got the lead, I was just going to go after them," Oswalt said.

The Astros won because this team, this little team that started so badly, this team that was forced to scratch and claw for everything it got, turned out to be a whole greater than the sum of its parts.

Their defeat in Game 5 had been so ghastly that some questioned if the Astros could bounce back. Baseball's roadside is littered with teams that collapsed after suffering that kind of loss.

The Astros had joked about it on the flight to St. Louis. They'd seemed unbothered.

"There's a reason our clubhouse was loose today," Garner said. "When you've got Roy out there, you have to feel pretty good. Roy went right out there and challenged them. He set a tone for the whole ballgame."

They weren't all loose. They just played that way.

"My stomach has been in knots since Monday," Lance Berkman said. "You don't get many opportunities like this. We had to get it done."

In doing so, he gave closer Brad Lidge a night off. Lidge had given up that monstrous game-winning home run to Pujols on Monday. He warmed up in the ninth and would have come in if Wheeler had gotten in trouble.

"Had it been a one- or two-run game, Brad would have been in there," Garner said. "We had a little room. We're not here without Brad."